ARTICLES

Providence is on Our Side

Joseph Pearce Visits the Bay Area

By Phil Sevilla

How does a street-brawling, violence-prone, anti-Catholic, and racist Englishman from the gritty side of London metamorphose into a scholarly and prolific Catholic author who, in the space of a half-dozen years, has produced twelve acclaimed books on some of the greatest 20th century Christian writers and is now regarded as an expert on modern English literary works? This question addresses the character of Joseph Pearce, who recently has been giving lectures in the Bay Area. Good-natured, humble, and generous with his time, Pearce spoke with me for a few hours on the phone one Sunday in May.

Pearce is a stocky, powerfully built man with a pronounced East London accent, who would look quite at home on an English rugby field or in a boisterous neighborhood pub. He grew up in a working-class family in London' s east end; his father was a carpenter. His parents were not churchgoers, although they considered themselves members of the Church of England. In practice, they were "agnostic," and both Joseph and his father were hostile to the Catholic faith. In the mid-'70s, a large influx of Moslems from Pakistan settled in the working class neighborhoods of London, areas which became tense "breeding grounds for racism," said Pearce. By the time he was fifteen, Pearce had joined a white supremacist organization, the National Front. He was also a member of the Orange Order, an anti-Catholic secret society, and other extremist organizations, which clashed violently with the Irish Republican Army. Several of his friends were killed due to the political violence in England prevalent during the 1970s. Pearce himself was sent to prison for publishing a magazine that incited to racial violence.

Pearce was first attracted by the political ideas of Chesterton and Belloc when he went looking for alternatives to communism and capitalism, and he read his first G.K. Chesterton book in 1980. He then began immersing himself in the writings of Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, and Cardinal Newman. Of Chesterton's works, The Well and the Shallows holds a special place in Pearce's heart and profoundly influenced his conversion to the Catholic faith. In that book, the well is the Church and the shallows are the various heresies and modern enemies of the Church. Pearce ultimately left the chaos of London's right wing politics and in 1989 was received into the Catholic Church. His father converted to the Catholic faith in the mid 1990s.

Since Pearce's formal education ended when he was sixteen, the Catholic education he received during and since his conversion has been "self-taught." Coincidentally, his mentor, G.K. Chesterton, did not attend college either. Pearce met his American wife, Susannah Brown (of Orange County, California) during her summer studies in Oxford. Mrs. Pearce received her masters in theology from the Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio. The couple moved to the United States two years ago when Pearce accepted the post as writer-in-residence at Ave Maria College in Michigan.

Pearce's first book, written in 1996, was Wisdom and Innocence, A Life of G.K. Chesterton. In 1998 Pearce traveled to Russia to interview Alexander Solzhenitsyn for the book, Solzhenitsyn: A Soul in Exile. According to Pearce, Solzhenitsyn, one of the greatest Russian writers and prophets of the 20th century, is deeply concerned about the future of Russia. He believes that Russia needs to embrace Christianity but is not sure if it will. Solzhenitsyn sees in post-Communist Russia the corrosive influence of the industrialized West: "The last twelve years I have stopped viewing Russia as something very distinct from the West... we should not use the words 'the West' but the word 'modernity.' The modern world," said Solzhenitsyn. "And, yes, then I would say that there are ills that are characteristic, that have plagued the West for a long time, and now Russia has quickly adopted them also. Untouched by the breath of God, unrestricted by human conscience, both capitalism and socialism are repulsive."

Pearce's readings of Chesterton's and Belloc's essays on distributism and of papal social teachings influenced his interest in E.F. Schumacher's 1973 bestseller, Small Is Beautiful. Pearce discovered in his research on Schumacher that the British economist had converted to the Catholic faith a year before his seminal book was published. Schumacher was also deeply influenced by papal encyclicals on social justice. Pearce explores in his book, Small is Still Beautiful, the correctness of the prophetic message Schumacher delivered in 1973 and reinforces and updates his original message about the paramount importance of the dignity of the human person and the notion that capital must serve people instead of people serving capital. Pearce sees an intellectual harmony between Tolkien, Chesterton, Belloc, Solzhenitsyn, and Schumacher.

According to Pearce, it's important for Catholics to read the history of England to understand what Protestantism is about -- and to understand the history of England, Pearce recommends reading the histories by Hilaire Belloc and G.K. Chesterton. Belloc, who was born in 1870, was a contemporary of Chesterton. A Catholic historian, Belloc wrote books specifically on the reformation in England -- on the characters of the reformation and individual biographies of the leading figures of the period. He also wrote a four-volume history of England. Chesterton's best known books include works with apologetical themes -- Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man, as well as biographies of St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Francis of Assisi. Yet, Chesterton also wrote A Short History of England.

Though Chesterton has not been well known as a political thinker, his influence has been global. Some consider him to be the father of the "small is beautiful" movement, and a Chesterton essay is credited with influencing Mohandas Gandhi to seek independence for India.

Pearce has also written a book on the life of Hilaire Belloc, Old Thunder: A Life of Hilaire Belloc. Belloc was a great advocate of Pope Leo XIII's social encyclical, Rerum Novarum. Chesterton wrote that Belloc was the master of distributism, while Chesterton and his friends were his disciples. Distributism, according to Pearce, is synonymous with the concept of subsidiarity in papal writings and is the antithesis of, and antidote to, monopolistic power and statism (state-run economies) and the concentration of economic power in the hands of the few. Chesterton's view of distributism was best expressed simply in his comment that every man ought to be allowed to own "three acres and a cow."

I asked Pearce what he thought about Moslem influence in Europe. His response: "When you have two religions coming into close conflict within the same culture, it leads to problems; and I can see that Europe -- not just England, but France and Germany and others that have allowed a large influx of Moslems into their countries -- is sowing the seeds of all sorts of disharmony in the future. I think it's very shortsighted and a perfect example of the loss of Christian identity on the part of political leaders not to see that obvious truth."

I asked Pearce what he thought of the changing demographics in Europe, where Muslims are having larger families, while, among the native populations, there are more coffins then cradles. Pearce said that, in spite of the trends, "as Christians we have to hope and pray and work actively for the re-evangelization of Christian Europe, so that more Christians practice their faith more fully, see the glory and wonders of human life, and begin to have healthy-sized families and reinvigorate the culture of Europe. That is the urgent task, especially of Christians, in Europe."

Pearce compares the global conflict of today with the mythological sub-creation of J.R.R. Tolkien. "The struggle today is embodied and epitomized by Tolkien's Lord of the Rings," said Pearce. "This battle between the Fellowship of the Ring [and the Dark Lord] is in many ways symbolic of [the struggle of] the Church against the forces of darkness. That sort of struggle goes on in every generation. Satan doesn't disappear for 200 years and come back again. What Tolkien refers to as human history being the long defeat, with only occasional glimpses of final victory, is rooted in man's fallen nature and the fact we're always open to being seduced by the dark, by Satan, and by evil. The particular struggle in the 21st century that Christians are going to face is with Islam. I suspect Islam is going to be a major force, as it was a thousand years ago, especially since large numbers are living in Europe. You have a very volatile cocktail for the future."

The theological virtue of hope is an essential part of Pearce's worldview. "The presence of Islam and the unsatisfactory nature of mammon, of worshipping money," he said, "will lead to a revitalization and the renewal of Christendom, and Europe will begin to see if it means anything at all. It's Christianity that gives [Europe] its meaning; it's culture and philosophy. Europe has to rediscover her Christian soul or die."

He continued, drawing from Chesterton's writings what we can learn about the crisis that confronts the Christian world today. "There is a wonderful line in a poem, 'The Ballad of the White Horse,'" said Pearce, "[about the] invasion of Catholic Anglo-Saxon England by the pagan Vikings, the Danes. The crucial moment -- high tide and the turn -- King Alfred cried, was reached. The tide of the Viking pagan invasion went as far as it was going to get. [This is like] the encroachments of modernism and the malaise of indifference and the heresy that has sort of crept into certain sections of the Church during the 1960s and 1970s. I think that, sometime in the early 1980s, the high tide had been reached. In the last 20 years we've seen a resurgence of traditional Catholic teaching, of orthodoxy and authentic teaching, which the Holy Father has had a lot to do with. In the American school system, we see the struggle -- Gonzaga University is turning around with Father Spitzer; there's Ave Maria College; [local, independent] schools like Trinity, Wood Rose springing up. It's a struggle, and it's going to take a generation."

I asked Pearce about the condition of the Church today and what the great authors of the 20th century thought about the problems of modernism. "Chesterton talked about the Catholic Church as a heavenly chariot careening through the centuries, heresies prostrated before it, the chariot itself reeling, but erect," said Pearce. "Every single century, the Church has faced corruption from within or threats from without, or both; but the Holy Spirit is with the Church. Christ has promised that He will never desert the Church. The Church will go on; the Church measures these things in centuries. We tend to see the situation in our own lifetime as being the situation. The Church will survive it. Providence is on our side. Do not succumb to temptation, to despair. Continue to courageously carry our swords for the Church militant. We will prevail. If we don't see the victory in our lifetime, we will be laying the foundations for the victories in the lives of our children. It is a very joyful feeling to fill you're part of this heroic struggle between the forces of light and the forces of darkness that has been going on ever since Adam and Eve. At the end of our lives, we want to be able to say we fought for the forces of light. We've served our Lord, and we're on our way to our eternal victory."

One sign of hope is the growing interest in Chesterton and Tolkein. "About 20 years ago," said Pearce, "there was very little interest in Chesterton -- there was one used book seller in England, and you had the Chesterton Review, published in Canada then. But since then there's been a real Chesterton revival. All his books are coming back to print. With the release of the [Lord of the Rings] films, Tolkien is now the biggest selling writer in the world. It shows the power of Catholicism to impact upon the culture; and to know that the greatest work of the 20th century was written by an orthodox Catholic, shows that the Catholic Church still does impact upon the secular culture. We have to go and engage the culture without ever compromising our principles, and show the culture that they're wrong and we're right. That's what Chesterton did so well, and what we're called to do in the 21st century. Deep theological questions are at the heart of Tolkien's epic novel, Lord of the Rings. By acting virtuously, we make the world better. God does bring good out of evil. That is the central message of Tolkien's epic."

Some of Joseph Pearce's books are available from San Francisco's Ignatius Press. They include: Old Thunder: A Life of Hilaire Belloc; Literary Converts; Tolkien: Man and Myth; Tolkien: A Celebration; Wisdom and Innocence: A Life of G. K. Chesterton; Solzhenitsyn: A Soul in Exile. Other books, published in England, are The Unmasking of Oscar Wilde; Bloomsbury and Beyond: The Friends and Enemies of Roy Campbell; Small is Still Beautiful; The Three Ys Men; Roy Campbell: Selected Poems; and Flowers of Heaven. For more information on Joseph Pearce's writings, please visit his webpage at www.josephpearce.info.

TOP